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Bambi takes on the macho wife beaters

HIS eyes flash with anger and his voice deepens. Forget the European Union or war in Iraq: the subject most likely to set Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, on fire, is machismo.

Zapatero’s nickname is “Bambi” because he sometimes resembles a frightened fawn, but he is a charging bull when he talks about Spain’s great “shame”, the wife-beating that claims the lives of dozens of women each year.

“Everybody knows I do not like war,” said Zapatero, 44, whose first action when he took office a year ago after a conservative government was voted out of office was to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. “The only war I want to wage is the one against criminal, murderous machismo.”

The influential Catholic Church has been disgusted by Zapatero’s talk about legalising gay marriage, allowing gay couples to adopt, banning religious education in schools and liberalising restrictive abortion